To be specific, Cheney isn’t just receiving faulty intelligence on Iran’s nuclear program so much as he’s demanding it (via Raw Story):
One former senior intelligence official is particularly concerned by private briefings that Vice President Dick Cheney is getting from former Office of Special Plans (OSP) Director, Abram Shulsky.
“Vice President Cheney is relying on personal briefings from Shulsky for current intelligence on Iran,” said this intelligence official.
Shulsky, a leading Neoconservative and member for the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), headed the shadowy and secretive Department of Defense’s OSP in the lead-up to the Iraq war — helping to locate intelligence that would support the Bush administration’s case for war with Iraq.
Yes, that good old Office of Special Plans, Doug Feith’s special project, the one that “hatched” all the intel the Bush adminsitration needed to sell justify the Iraq invasion. You can kill it, you can cut it up into tiny pieces and flush it down the toilet, you can even nuke the damn thing, but it just won’t stay dead:
Military and non-military intelligence sources have also raised worries over what some describe to as “the Iran group” and others as “the Iran working group” and still others as a “cabal” operating out of the Pentagon.
A recent article by Laura Rozen for the Los Angeles Times revealed the Pentagon has created yet another Office of Special Plans-type body called the Directorate for Iran, or the Iranian Directorate.
Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the initials for the Pentagon’s Iranian Directorate are the same as for that other uber-conservative chestnut, the theory of Intelligent Design, because once again, it appears the intelligence is being designed to fit the policy: to Bomb Iran!!!
(Cont.)
Several foreign policy experts, who wish to remain anonymous, have expressed serious concern that much like the OSP, the ID is manipulating, cherry picking, and perhaps even — as some suspect — cooking intelligence to lead the U.S. into another conflict, this time with Iran.
“Cheney distrusts the information being disseminated by CIA on Iran,” said one former senior intelligence official. “The reports assembled by the Iranian Directorate at the Pentagon differ significantly from the analysis produced by the Intelligence Community. The Pentagon Iranian Directorate relies on thin and unsupported reporting from foreign sources.”
Of course the Vice President distrusts the intelligence from CIA. He doesn’t want the truth. He can’t handle the truth. Lies, falsehoods, inappropriate inferences, poorly sourced information and misleading statements on the other hand, those he can work with. It’s his proper metier, so to speak, as these remarks after Lamont’s primary victory indicate:
And as I look at what happened yesterday, it strikes me that it’s a perhaps unfortunate and significant development from the standpoint of the Democratic Party, that what it says about the direction the party appears to be heading in when they, in effect, purge a man like Joe Lieberman, who was just six years ago their nominee for Vice President, is of concern, especially over the issue of Joe’s support with respect to national efforts in the global war on terror.
The thing that’s partly disturbing about it is the fact that, the standpoint of our adversaries, if you will, in this conflict, and the al Qaeda types, they clearly are betting on the proposition that ultimately they can break the will of the American people in terms of our ability to stay in the fight and complete the task.
And when we see the Democratic Party reject one of its own, a man they selected to be their vice presidential nominee just a few short years ago, it would seem to say a lot about the state the party is in today if that’s becoming the dominant view of the Democratic Party, the basic, fundamental notion that somehow we can retreat behind our oceans and not be actively engaged in this conflict and be safe here at home, which clearly we know we won’t — we can’t be.
Yes, Democrats sure do enable all the “al-Qaida types.” Especially all the ones in Iran, right Dick? The same ones you can’t wait to bomb the holy crap out of. Never mind that Al Qaeda is a Sunni orgnaization that is actively working to attack Shi’ites in Iraq. Can’t get too nuanced when discussing what steps to take in the never ending (but always just about to be won) War on Terror. Why, if we let the truth in the door, there’s no telling what wars might not get started!
thanks for this steven. this is the exact kind of story that I just didn’t have the energy to write about today.
They learn nothing.
And the right-wing wants to know why we disbelieve reports out of London and Lebanon.
Because we learned a long time ago to believe nothing. Just wait a few days and the truth will come out and be quickly buried on the back pages.
I posted in today’s News Bucket this from Foreign Policy blog FP Passport
H/T: Thinkprogress
Chuck Hagel is asking: Who’s going to do the dying?
Steven,
Thanks for doing this piece. I’ll be tracking it in the weeks and months to come.
Jeff
Steven, if you will, Cheney just wants more billions than Bill Gates and then to die as Cheney the Great who conquered so many countries that the lesser countries just said “We are now one, great leader, whatever natural resources we have is now yours.”
Anytime one of our Presidential wannabees wants to speak out about this, anytime …
Exactly when did Haliburton pull out of Iran? If I recall it was only about a year and a half ago, despite laws expressly prohibiting US corps doing biz with Iran.
Union is the way we are going.
From David Isenberg at http://blog.psaonline.org/2006/08/18/preparation-of-the-iranian-battlefield:
[N]ow we know, thanks to documents posted by the Arms Control Association on its website ( http://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Iran_Nuclear_Proposals.asp ) that contrary to the usual rightwing propaganda that Iran has no serious intent of negotiating over its nuclear program, that since the 2003 exposure of its nuclear program Iran has devised at least five proposals which included provisions designed to assure the international community that its nuclear activities are exclusively for peaceful purposes, rather than nuclear weapons.
In fact, the charge of a lack of serious intent can just as easily be laid against the United States. Secretary of State Rice spins the issue this way, saying that if Iran insists on negotiating revisions to the proposal given to Iran in June that should that be viewed as the end the diplomatic process. But very few commentators are familiar with the actual content of the proposal, which was not released to the public when it was given to Iran. A careful reading of the proposal, now available on the French foreign ministry website ( http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/country-files_156/iran_301/the-iranian-nuclear-question_2724/elemen
ts-of-revised-proposal-to-iran_5314.html ) reveals that it fails to offer Iran even the potential for the kind of security benefits that might be expected to accompany the demands that the same proposal makes on Iran.
While there are occasional moments of sanity such as the 21 former generals, diplomats and national security officials who released an open letter yesterday calling on the Bush administration to engage immediately in direct talks with the government of Iran without preconditions to resolve the Iranian nuclear program they are rare.
All together the above actions constitute what the Pentagon refers to as IPB, Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield. They also serve notice, per Mark Twain’s famous saying, that the news of the death of U.S. neocon influence is premature.